LooseLeaves:It's not at every literary conference that the writer under scrutiny is on hand to contribute to proceedings but Colm Tóibín, always a lively speaker, will participate in an international symposium exploring his work at Trinity College Dublin next Friday and Saturday, April 20th and 21st.
The symposium, Reading Colm Tóibín, will include lectures on different aspects of his work by scholars and critics. It opens on Friday at 7pm in the Thomas Davis Theatre with a lecture by historian Roy Foster and a public reading by Tóibín and continues on Saturday at 10am in the Robert Emmet Theatre with papers by Anne Fogarty, Eibhear Walshe, Liam Harte, Eve Patten, Christina Hunt Mahony and Eileen Battersby. On the Saturday afternoon, Tóibín will be interviewed by Fintan O'Toole. Trinity itself, with flowers and trees in full bloom, couldn't be prettier for the occasion.
The event is free. Details, including a timetable, can be found at http://www.tcd.ie/English/events/
Ledwidge in context
The shaping of a play in rehearsals is normally a slow, private process, but Dermot Bolger's new play, Walking the Road, which opens in June in Dublin and Flanders, and loosely based on the life of Francis Ledwidge, is being commissioned as part of the South Dublin County Council In Context Public Art Scheme, so plans are afoot to give the public and prospective playwrights access to the process.
The first read-through of the play is going to be open to the public, along with a public playwriting workshop, in Tallaght's Civic Theatre on Saturday, April 28th, and both events are free. The workshop will be conducted by Bolger, along with Ray Yeates, artistic director of Axis Arts Centre, and Jim Culleton, artistic director of Fishamble Theatre Company. Tickets are available from Colette Ryan at the Arts Office, South Dublin County Council (tel: 01-4149000, mornings; e-mail: cryan@sdublincoco.ie).
After the play opens in the Axis Arts Centre in June, it will travel to Ypres, in Belgium, where Ledwidge was killed 90 years ago in the first World War and where he is buried.Walking the Road will then return to Ireland in July for a run in the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, as part of Fused, the South Dublin County Arts Festival.
The Ashford factor
What is it about the village of Ashford in Co Wicklow that for more than two centuries it has been home to so many literati, from John Millington Synge to Seamus Heaney? The question intrigued Sheila Clarke so much that she has compiled a book of essays, Ashford Writers in Residence, by various contributors, on 14 of those who have found inspiration there.
In the entry on Richard Chenevix Trench, Eileen Byrne writes of how the 19th-century archbishop of Dublin and primate of Ireland spent summers at Broomfield House in Ashford for more than two decades. The day job may have had him in London, dining with the likes of Gladstone and Garibaldi, but Co Wicklow gave him a chance to write.
Among the 20th-century writers included is Shevawn Lynam, author of the novel, The Spirit and the Clay, and the biography, Humanity Dick, about the Connemara landlord, Richard Martin. Also a journalist, Lynam reported for The Irish Times from Spain and is described as one of Ireland's neglected geniuses by essayist Mary C King.
Irish modernism conference
A conference aimed at broadening debate on the literature of early 20th-century Ireland and the culture of the post-independence years takes place this autumn in Trinity College Dublin.Titled Irish Modernism, the call is out now for papers on a wide variety of topics including: the second generation - Beckett, O'Brien, Bowen, Devlin and others; the emigrant and the exile; xenophobia and the anti-jazz campaigns; the Irish Exhibition of Living Art; Irish modernist journals and publishing ventures; the Irish short story; Irish cinema; and censorship and modernism.
While seeking contributions on the leading figures of Irish modernism, there's interest too in papers on writers who reacted against the cultural impact of it.
All will be explored at the event, which runs October 19th-20th. For further details, e-mail Carol Taaffe or Edwina Keown at ctaaffe@tcd.ie and edwinakeown@gmail.com.